We drive down the dock, the rear of the van scraping the incline as we bump down the wooden planks. Ahead is our transportation for the afternoon. A float plane, also known as an Alaskan taxi. The plane is tiny, and it’s floats are almost bigger than the plane itself. We are six passengers and a pilot. The pilot waves cheerily as we jump out of the van and walk toward him. He opens the doors and one by one we step from the dock on to the float and up the rickety steps into the plane. Once we are all settled and buckled in, we are handed our headsets. They’ll protect our ears from the thrum of the propellers and they’ll also allow us to communicate with each other via microphone. After a quick safety talk – the location of our lifejackets and how to open the doors – he slams the doors and opens his own to jump into his seat.
Though my microphone, I can hear him talk to the harbour staff, letting them know we are ready to depart. Boats have to give the planes right of way, so we head out of the harbour into Wrangell Narrows and turn toward Frederick Sound. Petersburg is to our right, a tiny fishing village in Southeast Alaska. As we gain speed, I look down at the floats. It’s like we are on a motorboat, but within a minute we have taken to the air and are skimming across the surface of the water as we gain height.
As we soar higher, we cross Frederick Sound and head for Devils Thumb, in the Alaska Coast Range across the ice field. Below us, fishing boats grow smaller and Petersburg disappears behind us. We bank toward the south, toward Leconte Glacier, but we have twenty minutes before that’s visible. Once we cross the sound, we are only hundreds of feet above the brush covered hills. We are still gaining height, and the mountains ahead of us are still higher. Snow begins to appear below us – it’s June – and so do mountain goats. As we fly over them, they run across the fronts of the rocks, their crooked legs and hobbled feet clinging to the stone with more traction than I can ever imagine. The pilot keeps us entertained with notes about what we are seeing below, above and ahead of us.
Devils Thumb – that 9000 foot sheer rock face that juts up like, well, a sore thumb – appears now to my left. Leconte Bay appears to the right with the Stikine river delta further beyond. Ice floes dot the water, growing bigger we are get further into the bay. Presently, the glacier comes into view, tantalisingly it appears first between two mountains before disappearing out of sight. Then it appears again, part of the ice field beyond the face of the glacier, but that too disappears as we bank to the right again. When we finally get a full view of the glacier, no one can contain their excitement. My ears are abuzz with everyone’s gasps of awe. The pilot banks over the face of the glacier and then we fly into the ice field. The glacier, from above, curves like a gently flowing river from the hills into the bay. Instead of water though, it’s jagged ice that reflects a brilliant blue from the sun. Only I know how deadly the ice can really be: I spent three hours on a glacier in New Zealand last year and saw how fragile it really is – one small step and you could be at the bottom of a crevasse that looks deceivingly small. From above though, it looks like a solid mass of ice crystals, tossed carelessly between two mountains and left to its own devices.
Pools of Caribbean blue, larger than an Olympic swimming pool, fill seemingly small holes in the glacier. Moraines trail down the middle of the glacier carrying dirt and rock and other debris with them as they slowly (or not so slowly) make their way to the face of the glacier. Moraines on the edge of the glacier – those that abut the mountains on either side – pick up more debris as they creep along.
We bank once, twice, over the field and then the pilot informs us that he will head toward the face of the glacier so we can all take some photos of that. If we are lucky, we might see a calving. One of us (not me) does actually see a calving. I see the aftermath – the waves rolling away from the face of the glacier at the water’s edge.
The face of the glacier is beautiful. Towers of ice, some five or six stories tall, spring out of the water. We know they are actually twice that height. a glacier, like an iceberg, hides most of its mass under the water. So a glacier like Leconte, that’s six stories tall at the face, is really twelve stories tall. We can see a waterfall coming out of a nearby hole in the mountain – glacial waters, I think, from a source higher up in the ice field.
We circle the front of the glacier several times, alternating so each side of the plane has a decent view and then we take off out of the bay. We are lower – we have been steadily getting lower as we circled the glacier face – and we can see the harbour seals on the ice with their pups. At times, we can see blood too – this usually means that a harbour seal has just given birth on the ice floe. As we continue out of Leconte Bay – ten miles to the start of the bay from the face of the glacier – we fly over some small fishing boats that can maneuver the ice to a point. At the point where the bay meets the sound, the Stikine river delta seeps out to our left (south) – a beautiful network of streams and rivers.
We make our way back toward Petersburg, flying straight up Frederick Sound and then heading over Mitkof Island by the airport. As we get closer to land, I’m keeping an eye out below for any wildlife (read: whales) that we might see. Every so often, I think I spot a whale fin but I’m never sure and when I do speak up about it, we watch for a moment but (very disappointingly!) we don’t turn around. I can see the road I usually bike on and then I see the airport. With only two or so flights a day, we fly right over the runway with no compunctions. The town is stretched out in front of us and we zoom across Wrangell Narrows and bank over Kupreanof Island, where we can see the boardwalks that cross over the muskegs, and we can see a group of twenty or so people that turn in reaction to our propellers. They’re lined up along the boardwalk and as we bank over them, they are all turned to face us, cameras to their eyes, and we in turn are taking pictures of them, all lined up.
In a flash, we have flown past and are now turning into the narrows, lining our floats up with the channel markers and notifying the harbour patrol that we are inbound. Too quickly, we have touched water and are skimming across like a waterbug. The pilot cuts the props and we slow down, gently drifting toward the float. He revs the engine and begins to drive us now – that combination of boat and plane making for a unique way to travel. All too soon, we are clamoring down from the plane, not at all gracefully, and chattering excitedly about the adventure.
Another group is there to take our place in the plane, and we smile, only telling them that they’ll have a great time, not letting on about what sights they might encounter.